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"Thisone's in surprisingly good shape," I thought to myself as I pulled the tarp off an old dinghy that had once been used in my yacht club's long-defunct Junior Sailing Program.

The parts were all there: mast, rudder, centerboard, a very moldy bag containing a soiled but still crinkly Dacron jib, and an equally serviceable mainsail wrapped around the boom. There were some serious stains on the hull, but with a little scrubbing, I imagined the boat could be brought back to life in fine form.

I was not alone in the boneyard behind the club parking lot. The yacht club manager suddenly appeared, along with a younger new club member whom I thought I recognized. And Lee Helm, of all people, was in the group. They were engaged in a very animated conversation, as if having some sort of a debate.

"We can't hover over the kids every minute," Lee was arguing as they approached to see what I was up to. "They need to get in and out of trouble all by themselves."

"Liability," the club manager responded. "The Board will never go for it."

"How much for this old derelict?" I asked when they were within hailing range. "I'm looking for something I can sail around the harbor on warm summer afternoons. It will just fit alongside my big boat, if I use smaller fenders."

"Not so fast!" the manager cautioned. "Those boats are not for sale."

"But they've been sitting here for decades," I said. "I heard that the club wanted to get rid of them."

"Like, I think you heard wrong," Lee cut in.

"We're going to revive the summer sailing camp," explained the younger club member, who, it turned out, had been offered the head sailing instructor position.

"That's great!" I said, acknowledging that this was far more important than me getting a good deal on an old dinghy covered with air barnacles. "Why did the program shut down?"

"The kids just didn't stay with it," answered the manager. "Ten-year-olds were enthusiastic, but as soon as they hit 13 or 14, they all seemed to lose interest. But this time around we're going to make the boats more exciting: rig for spinnakers, go out into stronger wind, add a little more challenge. If the club will allocate some resources, we're going to try to get high-performance plan- ing dinghies the kids can graduate to as soon as they have the basics. We're going to put more emphasis on racing, and keep some of that teenage adrenaline flowing."

"Wrong on so many levels," insisted Lee. "And the type of boat, or the lack of a good race program, was not why the old sailing camp fizzled."

"What do you think went wrong with our program?" I asked.

Lee practically shouted back, with a variation of an old campaign slogan: "It's the hor mones, stupid!"

"What, you don't think sailing is romantic enough?" I asked.

"Not the way they teach it now," she answered. "Way too much supervision. And like, do I really have to point out that the kids don't give a flying fig about the Olympics? Neither do I. Sailing should never have been made an Olympic sport in the first place — it just means that the top level of the sport is controlled by Olympic television money. I agree that sailing in the US needs help, but the medal count has zero to do with it."

"What are you proposing?" asked the instructor.

"It's the hor mones, stupid!" Lee repeated.

"I'm sure that's true," I said. "But how do you channel all that chemical energy into sailing?"

"Sailing in this country is in trouble," added the young instructor-to-be. "Have you seen the latest newsletter from US Sailing? Only one bronze at the Olympics last year, our worst showing ever. I think we have the facilities and the talent here at this club to do our part to fix that, with a first-rate training program for sailors on an Olympic track."

"If the kids can't use a sailboat as, like, a dating aid, they'll move on to something with more opportunities, like fast cars or a garage band."

"Me, I took up the violin," the club manager reminisced. "I was the only boy in the string section. But I had a crush on the oboe player…"

"See what we're competing against?" said Lee. "The kids need to have boats that they can sail unsupervised, so they can invite a friend out to watch the sunset. The boats don't have to be fast or 'exciting.' They will mostly be sailing in light air anyway, and even a really 'hot' boat will not be very thrilling in 7 knots of wind. Much more important for the boats to be safe enough for those unsupervised moonlight sails."

"Lee, that's a tough order these days," I said, shaking my head. "Although, now that you mention it, my first date was a sail on a Sunfish. This was back East, and a really nasty thunderstorm caught us out on the Sound. Wind must have been 35 knots, but to us it seemed like 60. That's the thing about a Sunfish. You just cast off the halyard and the lateen spars come crashing down on the deck, and then you can ride out anything. If we were sailing a Laser we probably would have died…"

"Makes my point," said Lee. "It's the design of the program and the design of the boat."

"So then, how do we re-create that ability for kids to sail without supervision?" asked the manager. "Or at least, give them a much longer leash, without terrifying the parents?"

"The boats have to be safe and stable and self-sufficient," Lee explained, "easy to self-rescue with no crash boat. And they have to be comfy, so the kids want to invite a non-sailing friend. Start by having a deep cockpit with high bulwarks, and nice ergonomic park benchstyle seating for two."

"You're going to design the boat around a love seat?" I asked.

"Two love seats, actually," Lee added. "Port and starboard. And like, it doesn't have to be self-bailing — better with a deep cockpit and high protective bulwarks — but it does need floorboards to keep feet out of the bilge."

"Like my old Lightning," said the manager. "That was a sweet boat to sail, and we never capsized."

"Doesn't need to be that big," suggested Lee. "Maybe 13 to 16 feet. But the cockpit has to have lots of leg room, so no centerboard trunk. It could be a daggerboard forward of the seating, or even better, twin bilge boards. That would also make the boat really easy to right after a capsize, because that lower leeboard would be an easy climb. A lightweight kid, even one that's not particularly athletic, needs to be able to get this boat upright after a capsize."

"Not so easy if the boat turtles," warned the sailing instructor. "Then you need the crash boat."

"That drives more design features," Lee added. "It has to have wide rails outboard of the seats for hiking, but we have to keep the buoyancy volume low out at the extreme beam, so the boat floats closer to a 90-degree angle after a capsize, instead of trying to poke the mast underwater. And like, the daggerboard or leeboards should have weighted tips for two reasons: That way they don't need tackle to hold them down when sailing, and the small amount of ballast helps resist the turtle, especially if the freeboard is a little higher than usual, so that with the boat on its side the center of buoyancy is farther away from the ballast, or from the kid on the daggerboard, to provide a little more righting leverage. Add to the mix a sealed and buoyant mast, maybe a circular cross section to keep the cost down."

"Then how do you connect the sail to a circular-section mast?" I asked. "Mast hoops?"

"For sure," answered Lee. "When a squall hits, striking the mainsail needs to be just as much a quick and sure thing as it was in your old Sunfish."

"But the hoops can't go past the hounds," noted the sailing instructor. "I like mast hoops too; we had them on that old schooner I spent a summer on. But how do you keep the luff from sagging between the forestay and the masthead?"

"Vertical leading-edge batten," Lee suggested. She seemed to have an answer for everything.

"Would this dream boat of yours have an open transom?" I asked.

"That would be good for easy climbing back aboard," she said, "Especially with twin rudders. But contraindicated if the boat isn't self-bailing. And I like a decked-over stern, to keep the helmsperson sitting forward of the end of the tiller."

"Right, that's a common beginner syndrome," confirmed the instructor. "The newbies want to sit too far back, and they get in their own way when they put the tiller hard over."

"OK, this is beginning to take shape," I said as I imagined the hypothetical boat. "Comfy seating amidships for two, unobstructed cockpit, decked-over stern and bow, buoyant mast with mast hoops…"

"And very important," added Lee. "Self-tacking jib."

"Why self-tacking?" questioned the manager. "Isn't tacking the jib sheets a basic part of learning to be a good crew?"

"For sure," Lee agreed. "But it's not a basic part of a good date. Even the coolest, most mellow, helpful skipper can start to sound, like, a little short with their crew when the jib isn't handled just right during the tacks. Take that element away."

The club manager tried to summarize. "You've outlined a very safe boat, and a boat that could be the best teen sex aid ever, but I still don't think we could send kids out alone, out of sight of the crash boat. We'd get sued when the first kid came back with mild hypothermia."

"Maybe, sometimes, a level of supervision is still necessary, depending on the venue," Lee admitted. "But you can track them all electronically, through the miracle of AIS. Put the antenna in the transom so it works with the boat at any capsize angle. We'll need a little solar panel and a small lithium-ion battery in a sealed compartment. And let's add built-in running lights, as long as we have a maintenance-free battery that still works upside-down, and a solar trickle charger."

"So the instructor," I surmised, "sits in the club bar and monitors all the AIS hits?"

"Not for every class," Lee explained. "But yes, make it pretty safe. We could schedule 'Take a Friend for a Moonlight Sail' nights, even out on the Bay. Schedule at least one a month, like, on the full moon."

"Well I'm still not ready to give up on a racing program," complained the young sailing instructor. "Where's the structure? Where's the competition? Where's the skill that only comes with rigorous training and athletic discipline?"

"They can go out for soccer or football if they want that," said the manager, who seemed to be catching on to what Lee was advocating. "Sailing for kids, more than anything else, is about adventure."

"But how do they ever get good at it without competition?" the instructor insisted. "A good program should be producing new racers we can send to the interclub and regional youth regattas, and also prepare them for a college sailing team."

"You are forgetting the First Law of the Sea," I responded. "Which is?"

"It reads: 'Whenever two boats, sailing in vaguely the same direction, are in sight of each other, they are racing.' The kids will discover racing on their own even if there are only two boats on the water. The ones who get excited about it are the ones you want in the racing program. For everyone else, as you say, it's sailing for adventure, for socialization and a hot date."

"Forget about asking the yacht club Board to buy fancy high-performance boats," Lee recommended. "Let's have a design contest. Open to everyone. I'm calling it the Moonlight 15. Because it's a boat designed from the keel up for moonlight social sails."

"We might as well just cut to the chase," said the club manager, "and call it the 'Third Base 15.' And not because those kids will be thinking about baseball…"

— max ebb

Announcing The Moonlight 15 Design Competition

of the primary seating area.

self-bailing.

Avoid buoyant volume at wide beam extremes; Light and buoyant sealed mast, possibly circular untapered section; Twin bilge boards for easy righting maneuver after capsize; Weighted foil tips to keep foils from floating up under sail, and to aid capsize recovery; Masthead float might still be needed for a shallow water, high-wind venue.

the forestay. Possible square-top main for power. boom or a curved track.

suppress flogging and extend useful life.

if not self-bailing.

necessary. Antenna in transom for operation at all heel angles, including capsize. Alter natively, battery, panel and all electronics in floating, tethered safety communications module.